A very strange day

As the yellow rays of the rising sun slanted across the pasture, Gurney sat at the breakfast table drinking a second cup of coffee. A few minutes earlier, he’d watched the changing of the guard as the day-shift trooper cruiser arrived to replace the one summoned by Hardwick. He’d gone out to offer the new trooper breakfast, but the young man had declined with crisp, military politeness. “Thank you, sir, but I’ve already had breakfast, sir.”

A dull sciatic ache had settled in Gurney’s left leg, as he grappled with questions whose resolutions were eluding his grasp like slippery fish.

Should he ask Hardwick to get him a copy of the mug shot that must have been taken at the time of Saul Steck’s arrest—so he could be sure there was no mistake about the fingerprints—or might the paper trail generated between BCI and the original prosecuting jurisdiction raise too many questions?

Should he ask Hardwick, or maybe one of his old partners at the NYPD, to check the city tax rolls for ownership information on the brownstone, or might even that simple exercise raise a chain of sticky questions?

Was there any reason to doubt Sonya’s claim to have been as thoroughly duped by the “Jykynstyl” story as he was—apart from the fact that she struck Gurney as the sort of woman not likely to be duped by anyone?

Should he get a shotgun for the house, or would Madeleine be more upset than reassured by its presence?

Should they move out, live in a hotel until the case was resolved? But suppose it wasn’t resolved for weeks, or months, or ever?

Should he follow up with Darryl Becker on the status of the search for Ballston’s boat?

Should he follow up with BCI on the progress of the calls being made to the Mapleshade graduates and their families?

Was everything that had happened—from the arrival of Hector Flores in Tambury through the murders of Jillian and Kiki and the disappearances of all those girls, right up to the complex brownstone deception, the Ballston sex murders, and the beheaded doll—was all that the product of a single mind? And if so, was the driving force of that mind a practical criminal enterprise or a psychotic mania?

Most disturbingly to Gurney, why was he finding these knots so difficult to untangle?

Even the simplest of questions—should he continue weighing alternatives, or return to bed and try to empty his mind, or busy himself physically—had become ensnared in a mental process that conjured an objection to every conclusion. Even the idea of taking a few ibuprofens for his aching sciatic nerve met with an unwillingness to go into the bedroom to get the bottle.

He stared out at the asparagus ferns, motionless in the dead morning calm. He felt disconnected, as though his customary attachments to the world had been broken. It was the same unmoored sense he’d had when his first wife announced her intention to divorce him, and years later when little Danny was killed, and again when his own father died. And now …

And now that Madeleine …

His eyes filled with tears. And as his sight grew blurry, he had the first perfectly clear thought he’d had in a long time. It was so simple. He would quit the case.

The purity and rightness of the decision was reflected in an immediate feeling of freedom, an immediate impulse to action.

He went into the den and called Val Perry.

He got her voice mail, was tempted to leave his resignation message, but felt that doing it that way was too impersonal, too avoidant. So he left a message saying only that he needed to speak to her as soon as possible. Then he got a glass of water, went into the bedroom, and took three ibuprofens.

Madeleine had moved from the rocking chair to the bed. She was still dressed, lying on top of the spread rather than under it, but she was sleeping peacefully. He lay down next to her.

When he awoke at noon, she was no longer there.

He felt a small stab of fear, relieved a moment later by the sound of the kitchen sink running. He went to the bathroom, splashed water on his face, brushed his teeth, changed his clothes—did the things that would make it feel as much as possible like a new day.

When he went out to the kitchen, Madeleine was transferring some soup from a large pot to a plastic storage container. She put the container in the refrigerator and the pot in the sink and dried her hands on a dish towel. Her expression told him nothing.

“I’ve made a decision,” he said.

She gave him a look that told him she knew what he was about to say.

“I’m backing out of the case.”

She folded the towel and hung it over the edge of the dish drainer. “Why?”

“Because of everything that’s happened.”

She studied him for a few seconds, turned, and looked thoughtfully out the window nearest the sink.

“I left a message for Val Perry,” he said.

She turned back toward him. Her Mona Lisa smile came and went like a flicker of light. “It’s a beautiful day,” she said. “Do you want to come for a little walk?”

“Sure.” Normally he would have resisted the suggestion or, at best, accompanied her reluctantly, but at that moment he had no resistance in him.

It had turned into one of those soft September days when the temperature outside was the same as inside, and the only difference he sensed as they stepped out onto the little side porch was the leafy smell of the autumn air. The trooper sitting in his cruiser by the asparagus patch lowered his window and looked questioningly at them.

“Just stretching our legs,” said Gurney. “We’ll stay in sight.”

The young man nodded.

They followed the swath they kept mowed along the edge of the woods to prevent saplings from encroaching on the field. They circled slowly down to the bench by the pond, where they sat in silence.

It was quiet around the pond in September—unlike May and June, when the croaking frogs and screeching blackbirds maintained a constant territorial ruckus.

Madeleine took his hand in hers.

He lost track of time, a casualty of emotion.

At some point Madeleine said softly, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“My expectation … that everything should always be exactly the way I want it.”

“Maybe that’s the way everything should be. Maybe the way you want things is right.”

“I’d like to think so. But … I doubt that it’s true. And I don’t think you should give up the job you agreed to do.”

“I’ve already made up my mind.”

“Then you should change your mind.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a detective, and I have no right to demand that you should magically turn into something else.”

“I don’t know much about magic, but you have every right in the world to ask me to see things another way. And God knows I have no right at all to put anything ahead of your safety and happiness. Sometimes … I look at things I’ve done … situations I’ve created … dangers I didn’t pay enough attention to—and I think I must be insane.”

“Maybe sometimes,” she said. “Maybe just a little.” She looked out over the pond with a sad smile and squeezed his hand. The air was perfectly still. Even the tops of the tall cattail rushes were as motionless as a photograph. She closed her eyes, but the expression on her face grew more poignant. “I shouldn’t have attacked you the way I did, shouldn’t have said what I did, shouldn’t have called you a bastard. That’s the last thing on earth anyone should ever call you.” She opened her eyes and looked directly at him. “You’re a good man, David Gurney. An honest man. A brilliant man. An amazingly talented man. Maybe the best detective in the whole world.”

A nervous laugh burst from his throat. “God save us all!”

“I’m serious. Maybe the best detective in the whole world. So how can I tell you to stop being that, to be something else? It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

He looked out over the glassy pond at the upside-down reflections of the maples that grew on the far side. “I don’t see it in those terms.”

She ignored his response. “So here’s what you should do. You agreed to take on the Perry case for two weeks. Today is Wednesday. Your two weeks will be up this Saturday. Just three more days. Finish the job.”

“There’s no need for me to do that.”

“I know. I know you’re willing to give it up. Which is exactly what makes it all right not to.”

“Say that again?”

She laughed, ignoring his question. “Where would they be without you?”

He shook his head. “I hope you’re joking.”

“Why?”

“The last thing on earth I need is for my arrogance to be reinforced.”

“The last thing on earth you need is a wife who thinks you should be someone else.”

After a while they ambled, hand in hand, back up through the pasture, nodded pleasantly to their bodyguard, and went into the house.

Madeleine made a small cherrywood fire in the big fieldstone fireplace, opening the window next to it to keep the room from getting too warm.

For the rest of the afternoon, they did something they rarely did: nothing at all. They lounged on the couch, letting themselves be lazily hypnotized by the fire. Later Madeleine thought out loud about possible planting changes in the garden for the following spring. Still later, perhaps to keep a flood of worries at bay, she read a chapter of Moby-Dick aloud to him—both pleased and perplexed by what she continued to refer to as “the most peculiar book I’ve ever read.”

She tended the fire. He showed her pictures of garden pavilions and screened gazebos in a book he’d picked up months earlier at Home Depot, and they talked about building one next summer, maybe by the pond. They dozed on and off, and the afternoon passed. They had an early supper of soup and salad while the sunset was still bright in the sky, illuminating the maples on the opposite hillside. They went to bed at dusk, made love with a kind of tenderness that grew quickly into a desperate urgency, slept for over ten hours, and awoke simultaneously at the first gray light of dawn.